2018's Top Trends: Hotness, Faux Milk, & S'Mores

We can boil them all down to cocktails.

By Anneli Star Josselin Rufus

Published: February 01, 2018

All images: Kristan Lawson

If one single concoction embodied all the top new trends revealed at last week's Fancy Food Show, it would be a coconut-Sriracha cocktail in which tulsi-turmeric tonic sweetens superfruit-studded nut milk (or matcha! or nut-milk matcha!) and your favorite spirit, infused with your choice of beef, soybean, or turkey jerky and garnished with a s'more.

At the annual gathering of over 10,000 international food- and drinkmakers from around the world, including lots of East Bay entrepreneurs, several trends blazed like super blue blood moons.

One of these is coconut — as seen in Berkeley snackery Dang Foods' toasted coconut chips and Oakland soupery Nona Lim's coconut-milky Thai Curry and Lime Broth, and worldwide in such products as UK-made Heath & Heather coconutty green tea and the canned, carbonated Italian coconut-lemon soda Lemoncocco.

Another trend at the show, presented every January in San Francisco by the Specialty Food Assocation, is marshmallow — as seen in the new s'mores-flavored ice-cream sandwiches from LA's Coolhaus, Fairfield-based Jelly Belly's toasted-marshmallow jelly beans, and your East Bay 365 team's fluffy vegan faves: Dandies ... whose makers recommend using this delicious product in (surprise, surprise) s'mores.

Another trend is cured meats: from Hayward-based Red Dot Kitchen's Singaporean-style Bak Kwa to a vast span of tasty, chewy vegan jerkies from LA's Unisoy, including handy one-ounce snack packs due out this March.

Another high-caliber trend is wellness, with sooo many brands aiming to merge medicine with meals. Oakland's Numi Tea gave its new herbal taisans (sporting such ingredients as moringa, guayusa, nettle, and astragulus) names such as "Purpose," "Vision," and "Embrace"; other examples are Novato-based Navitas Organics' smoothie-ready powdered camu, maca, and other superfoods, and Wellness-Simplified's Breakfast Blend superfood-powder packets. The "free" in the FreeYumm company's name alludes to all the allegedly harmful stuff from which its pastries are free.